TAPS is a survivor-run group that helps victims of sex trafficking to break free. You can reach us at https://www.facebook.com/TraffickingandProstitutionServicesOnline/ We also help family members and other loves ones to "retrieve" someone they feel is either trapped into sex work. If you are a parent - you can get help at www.swanfellowship.webs.com. This is the author's personal opinion and since written in the USA is protected under rights of free speech.

I applaud her recovery. If she was in fact trafficked. I've seen no "proof" she was trafficked. I looked online and found nothing. So I question this only because we live in a "catfish" society right now where Samoly Mam also rose to great heights of fame and glory while her story was fake. No one asked questions. The same for Bill Hilliar who the movie "Taken" was based on. He was arrested for lying about being a veteran and raising money based on that lie. I just saw Kevin Brown on "8 Minutes" lying about having a rescue operation right on A&E. The address for his "church" appears to be doctor's offices. So if her story is in fact true - I applaud her personal recovery.

Do you know why I publish the news clips of my arrest on www.hightechmadam.com? When I stepped up on the first talk show stage in 1987 - people viewed sex trafficking on the same level as alien abduction today. Meaning that when I spoke about women being sold and trafficked - it was literally received by the public in the same manner as if I said that "little green men are stealing women, selling them for money - and we need to get the police to start helping us, the courts to stop putting us in jail, and society to stop looking at us like criminals".

Now what was the FIRST reaction of people? She's lying. Same as the victims of Bill Cosby - she's lying. So I laid my life open. I published those clips and made them available even though the arrest wasn't even under my legal name.

The article looks like I was busted for "running a brothel" right? Read carefully - the warehouse was next to the Van Nuys police station, covered with CCTV cameras that recorded tape and then broadcast back to my house, which was behind heavy iron bars and gates, and had armed security inside. Now I asked you what BROTHEL is built that way? The truth is this was the first adult safe house in the country. Children of the Night had opened up beds in 1979 but they cut off at 18 years of age. So I ask you -where were the adults over 18 years old to go for safety? I had once used apartments as safe houses but we kept having pimps show up with guns demanding their victims back. I got worried some kid was going to get shot in one of these rescues - so I figured I'd get a warehouse in a remote area, get it close to the police station, and we'd probably be a bit safer.

We were. I got a call from a woman who was being pimped by a drug dealer in Lancaster. She asked to come get her out of there. I picked her up and put her in the warehouse. He found out where it was and then tried to storm the place with another man. They realized they couldn't get inside and left. Next thing I know - they're reporting it to the police as a "brothel" on the "anonymous tip" line. The police came in and arrested her. She was on probation. They got her to testify against him - he got locked up on drug charges from what I was told. They had nothing on me because there was no brothel there and I wasn't pimping her. This is why they arrested my mother and tried to force me to snitch on other people. I refused. Because I refused - I had to plea to a fraud charge and take probation.

I had to wait until I got off probation before I could go on camera and talk about what the place was for, and the fact that all over this country men, women and children were being forced to prostitute, strip, be in porn, etc. and then they were not only the ones arrested for this - but also the ones having to live with the shame.

So I have my news clip up there to show I was there, I had the warehouse, I was "in the game". I also have the clip up showing that in August of 1987 - I started speaking out that this country needed to change the way it treated us. I have a news clip up there with a date on it so it can be verified that it's real and true as to what I did and the date I did this.

In 1988, the first alternative sentencing program for prostitutes was created by then mayor Tom Bradley, Chief Gates and Sheriff Block. The first residential program for HIV positive pregnant prostitutes was set up at the old Via Avanta program in 1988 where they got a year treatment, and could keep their kids with them, rather than be incarcerated. So too was the first house set up where transgender HIV positive men could be housed thanks to Tom Bradley. He didn't call it that because it would have been fire bombed - but the men in the house, and the others who worked on this, knew what it was.

The first 12 step meetings where those exiting the sex industry, whether trafficked or not, could find recovery was called to order in August of 1987. The alternative sentencing program was so effective in Los Angeles on many levels that Allentown, PA called to invite me to move back there and start one. We opened the Program for Female Offenders in 1990. We literally cleared every woman in the Lehigh womens' jail out of there and into the house where they got counseling, job training, daycare, transportation to work, etc.

People still didn't believe our stories of trafficking. To further prove this - I remembered the public didn't believe Linda Lovelace because she had published her story in a book. I refused over $1,000,000 in book and movie offers to tell the story because I knew it would then be a way the public would discount the story as "fiction". In fact, I waited until I had this much in offers and went onto the Joan Rivers Show in 1991 - showed the contracts to Joan and the audience -and then ripped them up. I then told Joan, the audience, and the camera that it was "more important people believe this was real then I sell some book or make a movie".

The Lindsey Wager Movie "Fighting for My Daughter" was made about a young girl in Canada we helped to rescue. A pimp had taken her and no one would tell the mother where she was. The mother called me asking for help. I suggested she dress up like a hooker and go out on the stroll - and once the working girls thought she was "one of them" then they'd tell her where her daughter was. That's exactly what she did and they rescued her daughter from a very famous violent pimp up in Canada. The film was aired in 1995.

Our first drop-in crisis center for prostitutes, SPACE was opened in 1991. It was opened by Paige Latin - who was a sponsee of mine. It was taken over and turned into PACE in 1994 that's still operating today from what I understand. http://www.pace-society.org/library/sex-trade-and-police-response.pdf This center is how the mother called me for help finding her daughter that became the film. I have interviews up on our radio station page where Paige speaks about me sponsoring her, how she never "prostituted again" and how this led to her forming SPACE, and then handing it over to PACE when her father was dying and she had to go care for him at the end.

I have interviews up at www.leavingtheliferadio.com where more than one person says I saved their life. You can hear a meeting of SWA where men and women have come together to work in their recovery. If you look at the news stories at www.hightechmadam.com - you'll see quotes from more than one person talking about how our program helped save their lives.

The Trafficking Act of 2000 was passed giving us federal recognition. What that means is what I said - in 1984 and 1987 the world DIDN'T BELIEVE THIS WAS REAL. I grew up with people JOKING about how "white slavery doesn't exist". If you watch "Thoroughly Modern Millie" with Julie Andrews released in 1968 - you'll see they've made a musical comedy out of sex trafficking - clearly making it appear that NO SUCH THING exists! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWS1Sz5IKJc They certainly wouldn't be joking about it like they did in that film if people thought this stuff was "real".

I can guarantee you that if Michael Horowitz, the author of the Act, had stepped up to have that Act passed in 1987 - he would have been laughed right out of the building. The Act would NOT HAVE PASSED had I not spend THIRTEEN YEARS convincing America on their afternoon talk shows, and their evening shows like 60 Minutes, 20/20, and Inside Edition that this stuff was in fact REAL. The very minute we created the first "alternative sentencing program" in 1988 - was the first time this country officially recognized these women were victims and not criminals. I take that back - not WE but ME.

I want you to see what I was up against - in 1982 this was a hit movie starring Dolly Parton and Sylvester Stallone - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivLpzyTA9ik Noq just imagine me two years later trying to explain to the Van Nuys police the warehouse was a "safehouse" to protect me who were trafficking in women? That the producer of the "Dating Game" was using the show to get papers to take women into other countries where they would disappear into harems. That because of Iran Contra diplomat planes were taking American women to be sold to drug dealers. Do you have any comprehension that when I would call the police for help in the early 1980's they would accuse me of "pranking' them and hang up! That when I'd see therapists for my PTSD - they would think I was "hallucinating" because "things like that don't exist. So I stepped up on those news shows, talk shows, tabloid shows, newspaper interviews - saying the police needed to believe us and the mental health system needed to learn how to help us recover.

There's more. When the legal brothels spent $1,000,000 at a PR firm to bring the brothels into California in 1988 as a "way to fight AIDS" - we beat them. We were the ONLY OPPOSITION. No one else stepped up to oppose them with this Bill they tried to get passed in California. So there are no legal brothels in California because of me.

In 2013, the brothels tried to expand into Las Vegas. http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/nevada-legislature/prostitution-bill-not-nevada-legislatures-agenda We were the ONLY opposition that appeared there that day testifying against this. I have an 8 hour long videotape of the whole day of hearings proving this if you want to wade through to the end where we were the only ones who stood up after the Brothel Lobbyist testified for this project. One that the mayor, the brothel owners, celebrities, architects, and investors all wanted I should add. We won. There are no legal brothels in Las Vegas where the Mob Museum and the Arts District is now because of me.

But Wilthelma Ortiz Walker Pettigrew is one of the top 100 "most influential people"?

You know what's sad? I see on Wilthelma's Linkedin page she's "still looking for money to pay for her education".

Wow. She didn't get enough for college after spreading her face and name all over the media - branding her for life a "trafficking victim"? Reminds me of Linda Lovelace and how when she needed $10,000 for her transplant after being paraded all over to try and ban pornography for these people - they turned on her.

Wilthelma - I have an extensive list of places that will give you a scholarship. I further have a list of companies who will hire you even with a record. I have a list of foundations who give survivors money to start their own companies - even if you're a felon. You want to get a BA in communications? I have members of SWA who are working in the media now who would be glad to mentor you.

It's a crying shame when people like Ricky Martin, Malika Saar, the McCain Institute and the California Endowment, who are funding this "No Such Thing" campaign you're the poster child for neglected to either inform you of this information I have - nor the fact I have it and that's what I share with callers to our hotline and members of www.sexworkersanonymous.com But then if they had - I would have made sure you at least got your education paid for in exchange for plastering your face all over the internet as a survivor. It's fun now - but when you get your degree and you find people not willing to hire you because of this - we'll talk.

But oh they care so much about you Wilthelma. So that's why they didn't tell you I give out referrals like this all the time on our hotline for the people that pay not only for things like your degree - but I even have a list of foundations that will pay for your living expenses while you go to school? I guess it's because I'm not "influential" enough.

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About Me

I've been helping men and women leave the sex industry since 1987. Some were forced - some were not. Some thought they weren't and with time realized they were. Some thought they were and with time realized they weren't. Which is why I just focus on this - if you want help to leave any part of the sex industry for any reason - just get in touch. I run Sex Workers Anonymous, Trafficking & Prostitution Services, as well as the American Trafficking Institute. I produce www.blogtalkradio.com/stopsextrafficktalk, and the magazine "Sanity Today". I also help investigators and the authorities with sex trafficking cases, and families help their loved ones leave the streets. Currently I'm organizing www.boycottsnoop.com to demand an acknowledgment of the damage that was done to women during his 2003 tour and www.pimpalert.com to help caught pimps who are dangerous and on the streets. Our book on the history of this field "Anatomy of a Movement" is almost done.